CHAPTER 11 The Peculiar Institution
TEST BANK
Learning Objectives
1. Explain how slavery shaped social and economic relations in the Old South.
2. Identify the legal and material constraints on slaves’ lives and work.
3. Explain how family, gender, religion, and values combined to create distinct slave cultures in the Old South.
4. Describe the major forms of resistance to slavery.
Multiple Choice
1. Which is true of plantation owners in the nineteenth century?
a. They frequently broke the law by knowingly buying slaves imported from Africa.
b. They were often first-generation British or French immigrants.
c. They typically supported the Republican Party.
d. They were very public about their ambivalence toward slavery.
e. They insisted that slavery was required in order for whites to be truly free.
2. Frederick Douglass
a. argued that knowledge was essential to achieving freedom from slavery.
b. spent the whole time he was enslaved doing plantation field work.
c. opposed the women’s rights movement.
d. was freed by his enslaver.
e. believed resistance to slavery was futile.
3. On what grounds did Frederick Douglass claim his authority as a spokesperson against slavery?
a. He could read and write.
b. He was born free and educated as a child.
c. He had experienced slavery.
d. He had converted to Quakerism.
e. His wife and child were sold away from him.
4. Frederick Douglass argued that
a. in desiring freedom, slaves were truer to the nation’s founding than were most white Americans.
b. the United States should adopt a gradual emancipation plan that would eliminate slavery within forty years.
c. free blacks would be better off if they moved to Liberia, where a colony of former American slaves had
been founded.
d. blacks should not serve in the U.S. Army during the Civil War because of the racial discrimination they
faced.
e. free African–Americans should “let down their buckets where they were” and accept inequality, at least for
a period of time.
5. The U.S. slave population on the eve of the Civil War was approximately
a. 1 million.
b. 2 million.
c. 3 million.
d. 4 million.
e. 5 million.
6. What was true of the South and slavery in nineteenth-century America?
a. England did not need cotton from the South.
b. The South’s total population consisted of 20 percent slaves.
c. As it moved closer to 1860, the rate of natural increase for the slave population was decreasing.
d. The amount of money invested in slavery was a small part of the economy.
e. The Old South had developed into the largest and most powerful slave society the modern world has
known.
7. In the nineteenth century, which product was the world’s major crop produced by slave labor?
a. tobacco
b. indigo
c. sorghum
d. cotton
e. rice
8. On the eve of the Civil War, approximately how much of the world’s cotton supply came from the southern
United States?
a. 90 percent
b. 75 percent
c. 50 percent
d. 33 percent
e. 25 percent
9. When considering slavery’s geographic extent, the numbers held in bondage, and the institution’s
economic importance, what was the largest and most powerful slave society the modern world has known?
a. the U.S. South
b. Brazil
c. the French Caribbean colonies
d. the Spanish Caribbean colonies
e. the British Caribbean colonies
10. In the nineteenth century, why did cotton become the most important commodity in international trade?
a. No one country dominated the production of cotton.
b. The early industrial revolution centered on factories that made cloth out of cotton.
c. Europeans had stopped using tobacco.
d. Brazilians had stopped using sugar.
e. There was a wool shortage because Britain had banned sheep-farming in Ireland.
11. Why was slavery called a “peculiar institution” of the South?
a. It was unlike anything else in the world’s history
b. It had been opposed by a majority of the nation’s presidents
c. Despite the rhetoric, it was an economic drain on southern society
d. It affected only a small portion of the southern population
e. It set the South apart from the North
12. On the eve of the Civil War, cotton
a. was no longer a significant part of the U.S. economy.
b. had been replaced by wool in the New England textile mills.
c. made up over half of the total value of American exports.
d. was harvested mainly in African countries.
e. was primarily grown and harvested by wage laborers.
13. The internal slave trade in the United States involved the movement of hundreds of thousands of enslaved
persons from
a. older states like Virginia to the Lower South.
b. Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland.
c. the West Indies to the Mississippi River valley.
d. the Lower South to the Upper South.
e. the lower Mississippi River valley to the upper Mississippi River valley.
14. What economic effect did southern slavery have on the North?
a. It was minimal at best, which helps to explain why northerners routinely opposed slavery.
b. Many northerners profited from investing in real estate partnerships that controlled southern plantations.
c. A few New York shipping companies benefited from slavery, but the institution had little effect otherwise.
d. Southern slavery helped finance industrialization and internal improvements in the North.
e. Southern slavery drained resources from the North and helped keep the whole nation in a depression during
the 1850s.
15. Which statement is true about slave trading within the United States between 1820 and 1860?
a. More than 2 million enslaved people were sold during this time.
b. The states of the Upper South were known as “importing” states, because of the vast number of slaves they
purchased from the Lower South.
c. Slave trading was illegal and took place in secret.
d. Cotton Kingdom states refused to take part in slave trading.
e. Southern states and municipalities did not tax the sale of slaves, because slave trades were performed off the
books.
16. In the decades before the Civil War, the northern states
a. were unaffected by slavery.
b. refused to follow federal law requiring the return of fugitive slaves.
c. refused to do business with the slave states.
d. financed industrial development with money earned in the trade of cotton produced by slave labor.
e. boycotted all American cotton because it was produced by slave labor.
17. The term “Lords of the Loom” refers to
a. early New England factory owners.
b. preachers who wove heart-wrenching stories of slave suffering into their sermons.
c. planters who established textile operations on their plantations.
d. master artisans who produced cloth in the South.
e. an influential 1840s novel about slavery.
18. Which two categories delineate the key differences among southern states in the decades before the Civil War?
a. slave and free states
b. New and Old South
c. French and British cultures
d. Upper and Lower South
e. coastal and interior states
19. In the decades before the Civil War, the southern states
a. developed larger cities than the northern states.
b. had higher literacy rates than the northern states.
c. industrialized very little compared to the northern states.
d. attracted more immigrants than the northern states.
e. developed a larger public school system than the northern states.
20. Why could someone argue that the North was complicit in the expansion of slavery?
a. Many northern states had slaves at one time.
b. Some slaves ran away to northern states.
c. Some slaveholders were originally from the North.
d. Most in the North wanted to reopen the importation of slaves.
e. Northern factory demand for cotton steadily increased.
21. Which of the following is a true statement relative to the Upper South and the Lower South?
a. Committed to slavery, all states in both the Upper South and Lower South seceded from the Union.
b. The Upper South was less economically diversified than the Lower South.
c. The Upper South did not initially join the Lower South in seceding from the Union.
d. Neither the Upper South nor the Lower South had major industrial centers.
e. Richmond, Virginia, is considered to be the heart of the Lower South.
22. Which is true of the South in the first half of the nineteenth century?
a. It was increasingly urban, with half of the nation’s ten largest cities.
b. It produced about half of the nation’s manufactured goods.
c. It had far fewer European immigrants than the North did.
d. It benefited from a boom in railroad development, which eventually connected even small towns with one
another.
e. Its banks, most with home offices in the North, refused to lend money to plantation owners.
23. Which was the only significantly large city in the Cotton Kingdom in 1860?
a. New Orleans
b. Natchez
c. Memphis
d. Dallas
e. Charleston
24. In 1860, what percentage of southern white families were in the slave-owning class?
a. 10 percent
b. 25 percent
c. 40 percent
d. 55 percent
e. 75 percent
25. Southern farmers in the backcountry
a. generally worked the land using family labor.
b. were all directly involved in the market economy from the start of the nineteenth century.
c. owned a substantial number of slaves.
d. were highly self-sufficient but still bought most of their supplies from stores.
e. were fortunate that their land was far better for farming than that owned by planters.
26. Most white southern farmers were
a. wealthy.
b. slaveholders.
c. literate.
d. self-sufficient.
e. dependent on manufactured goods.
27. The relationship between rich southern planters and poor southern farmers
a. led to numerous violent uprisings in the southern hill country.
b. was complicated by the strong antislavery movement among poor farmers in the 1850s.
c. was strained by planters’ insistence that farmers participate in the slave patrols.
d. showed itself in politics, with the poor becoming Whigs and planters becoming Democrats.
e. benefited in part from a sense of unity bred by criticism from outsiders.
28. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee and Joseph Brown of Georgia rose to political power
a. because of their membership in and identification with the planter class.
b. in the 1850s, as members of the small but influential southern Republican Party.
c. as self-proclaimed spokesmen of the common man against the great planters.
d. as proponents of gradual emancipation plans in order to destroy the “slavocracy.”
e. after gaining popularity for creating public education systems in their states.
29. Which statement is true about the attitudes of most poor southern white farmers toward the southern elite
planter class?
a. Most poor southern whites identified with planters based on their shared whiteness and rights to political
participation.
b. Most poor southern whites resented planters because the planters alone could vote.
c. Most poor southern whites identified with the planter class because most southern whites owned slaves.
d. Most poor southern whites agreed with northern criticisms of slavery.
e. Most poor southern whites agreed with Andrew Johnson’s criticism of the planter “slavocracy.”
30. What was the significance of the planter class in antebellum Southern society?
a. They constituted a majority of the population.
b. They were often Europeans who operated their plantations from abroad.
c. They invested their profits in industrial endeavors and began to transform the southern economy.
d. They were the only social group in the South to openly discuss abolition as a potential good.
e. Their values and goals dominated Southern life.
31. In 1850, a majority of southern slaveholders owned how many slaves?
a. 1 to 5
b. 6 to 10
c. 15 to 20
d. 25 to 30
e. at least 35
32. To qualify as a member of the planter class, a person had to be engaged in southern agriculture and
a. own at least ten slaves.
b. grow specifically cotton or sugarcane.
c. own at least twenty slaves.
d. live in a large mansion.
e. own at least fifty slaves.
33. What resulted from the sexual exploitation of slave women?
a. Church ministers criticized the activity as a sin.
b. Most slave men were unaware of the exploitation of their wives and relatives.
c. Some wives of plantation owners resented when this happened and then punished slaves.
d. Many of the babies that resulted from the exploitation were sent to Africa.
e. Slaveowners often publicly discussed their exploitations.
34. From 1840 to 1860, the price of a “prime field hand”
a. rose about 80 percent, which made it harder for southern whites to enter the slaveholding class.
b. rose less than 10 percent, which kept the size of the planter class about the same.
c. declined about 15 percent as the supply of slaves in the internal slave trade increased.
d. became so inexpensive that the slaveholding class grew to include nearly two-thirds of southern whites.
e. declined because labor-intensive agricultural work became less popular in the South.
35. Planters’ wives, known as “plantation mistresses,”
a. generally became abolitionists.
b. were responsible for supervising domestic servants, and supervised the whole plantation when their
husbands were away.
c. generally advocated for the rights of enslaved women whom planters had sexually exploited.
d. typically took part in a thriving female culture centered on voluntary reform and religious organizations.
e. typically were feminists.
36. According to the paternalistic ethos, which “right” did slaves have?
a. right to not be separated from family members
b. right to adequate food
c. right to give their children their own last names
d. right to a trial by a jury of their peers
e. right to legally accuse a cruel master of abuse
37. Which of the following is true of the paternalist ethos in southern slavery?
a. Slaves referred to their owners as “mother” and “father.”
b. Most slave owners believed it their responsibility to teach slaves how to read.
c. Slave owners who separated families were considered cruel by their peers.
d. Slave owners felt responsible for their slaves and believed they could not take care of themselves.
e. Slave owners who fathered children with slaves typically freed the children.
38. Which belief would be typical of a paternalistic slave owner in the nineteenth century?
a. Slaves should be formally married in a church.
b. Slaves would be lost without the care and guidance of their owners.
c. Slave women should be excused from work while they were pregnant or had small children.
d. Slaves should be taught to read the Bible.
e. Slave children should attend planation schools until the age of ten.
39. Which event is credited with helping to ingrain the paternalist ethos more deeply into the lives of southern
slaveholders?
a. Nat Turner’s Rebellion
b. the nullification crisis
c. the development of domestic ideology
d. the closing of the African slave trade
e. the secession crisis
40. In the South, the paternalist ethos
a. reflected the hierarchical society in which the planter took responsibility for the lives of those around him.
b. declined after the War of 1812 as southern society became more centered on market relations rather than on
personal relations.
c. suffered because southern slaveholders lived among their slaves, so that the groups’ constant exposure to
each other made southern slavery more openly violent than elsewhere.
d. brought southern society closer to northern ideals.
e. encouraged southern women to become more active and better educated so that they could help their
husbands in their paternal roles.
41. What did the Reverend Charles C. Jones of Georgia do that made him different from most other slaveowners?
a. He improved slave housing and medical care.
b. He executed slaves who performed poorly.
c. He refused to allow slaves to learn about Christianity.
d. He taught his slaves to read and write.
e. He pushed for an end to slavery
42. Which value was particularly strong in the South in the early nineteenth century?
a. philanthropy
b. egalitarianism
c. personal honor
d. competitiveness
e. social mobility
43. What did the southern code of honor demand of men?
a. that their slaves be well fed, healthy, and appear to be happy
b. defense of the reputations of themselves and their families
c. a wife who was able to demonstrate that she was an intellectual equal to her husband
d. sexual fidelity to their wives
e. public demonstration of their willingness and ability to work alongside their slaves
44. The proslavery argument that slavery made economic independence among whites possible
a. was mainly advanced by promoters of industrialization.
b. was widely accepted by southern whites.
c. was mainly advanced by white northerners.
d. was only accepted by the southern planter class.
e. was only accepted by slaveholding southern farmers.
45. Some people in America criticized the British emancipation of all slaves in the 1830s on what grounds?
a. Many ex-slaves moved to West Africa, where they were re-enslaved.
b. Violent revolutions occurred in many British colonies in the 1840s.
c. Many freed slaves moved to the United States, flooding an already full labor market.
d. The economy of the Caribbean was harmed as a result.
e. Many ex-slaves could not find work and became homeless.
46. On what grounds did southerners claim that slavery was “modern”?
a. It was strongest in the United States, one of the most modern nations in the world.
b. It was made possible by the transportation revolution of the past two centuries.
c. It represented an innovation in securing human labor.
d. It was the foundation of the cotton economy, whose products were essential to modern life.
e. It offered to slaves the opportunity to learn to read and write.
47. John C. Calhoun and George Fitzhugh
a. agreed that slavery was not a necessary evil but something actually positive and good.
b. fought a famous duel that demonstrated the southern commitment to the idea of defending one’s honor.
c. competed for power in Andrew Jackson’s administration.
d. were known as two of the most vicious slaveholders, who regularly whipped their slaves.
e. agreed on the need for slavery but disagreed as to whether it actually was beneficial to society.
48. The end of slavery in most Latin American nations
a. resulted from violent slave revolts that rocked Latin America from 1822 to 1855.
b. involved gradual emancipation accompanied by recognition of owners’ legal rights to slave property.
c. was inspired by the emancipation of slaves that occurred as a result of the American Civil War.
d. followed a pattern very different from that established in the northern United States.
e. did not happen until the United States made emancipation an aim of the Spanish-American War.
49. In the Americas in 1850, significant slave systems remained only in
a. the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil.
b. the United States, the British Caribbean, and the French Caribbean.
c. the United States and Mexico.
d. the United States and Canada.
e. the United States, Central America, and Chile.
50. Who said that the language in the Declaration of Independence—that all men were created equal and entitled to
liberty—was “the most false and dangerous of all political errors”?
a. James Madison
b. James G. Birney
c. John C. Calhoun
d. Denmark Vesey
e. Solomon Northup
51. Who did the Virginian writer George Fitzhugh describe as the “happiest” and “the freest people in the world”?
a. southern planters
b. plantation mistresses
c. slaves in the American South
d. free blacks
e. southern yeoman farmers
52. What did Abraham Lincoln identify as the core of the proslavery argument?
a. It relied on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
b. It equated slaves with animals.
c. It echoed arguments made by slave owners in the Roman Empire.
d. It relied on the assumption that slaves would not choose freedom if given the option.
e. It served the interests of those who benefited from slavery.
53. Which of the following statements about slavery and the law is true?
a. Because slaves were property, a master could kill any of his slaves for any reason.
b. Slaves were legally permitted to possess guns if guns were necessary for their work (tasks such as scaring
birds away from rice fields, for example).
c. Laws specifically provided for a slave to be taught to read and write if the master so chose.
d. A slave could, with permission from his or her master, testify against a white person in court.
e. Slaves accused of serious crimes were entitled to their day in court, although they faced all-white judges
and juries.
54. After 1830, the majority of white southerners came to believe
a. that the planter class had too much power.
b. that freedom for whites rested on the power to command the labor of blacks.
c. that a wage labor system is more productive than a slave labor system.
d. that slavery is immoral and should be abolished.
e. that the South should industrialize.
55. Celia was
a. the pen name of Floride Calhoun, who secretly criticized her husband John’s views on slavery.
b. a slave tried for killing her master while resisting a sexual assault.
c. the name used to signify a southern plantation mistress in writings about the institution.
d. a slave who became famous for helping other slaves escape via the Underground Railroad.
e. a character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
56. In 1855, an enslaved woman in Missouri named Celia killed her enslaver while resisting his sexual assault.
State law deemed “any woman” in such circumstances to be acting in self–defense. The court
a. sentenced Celia to death because she was property in the eyes of the law, and thus not legally a “woman.”
b. found Celia innocent, because she had acted in self-defense.
c. deported Celia to Ohio for her own protection.
d. declared a mistrial, because the jury could not agree on a verdict.
e. refused to hear the case, declaring that Celia was not a citizen.
57. How did conditions for slaves in the United States compare to those in the Caribbean by the mid–nineteenth
century?
a. Life expectancy for slaves in the United States was nearly ten years less than for slaves in the Caribbean.
b. Infant mortality rates were significantly higher for slaves in the United States.
c. Slaves were typically better fed in the United States than they were in the Caribbean.
d. Laws in the United States afforded slaves significantly stronger legal protection against ill treatment and
cruel punishments.
e. While slave owners in the United States could legally choose to free their slaves, freeing slaves was illegal
in the Caribbean.
58. Which right did free blacks in the South have in the decade before the Civil War?
a. the right to marry
b. the right to strike a white person in self-defense
c. the right to carry a firearm
d. the right to testify in court
e. the right to vote
59. Which were free blacks in the South legally prohibited from doing?
a. marrying
b. socializing with slaves
c. owning property
d. striking a white person in self-defense
e. living in cities
60. In an 1840 letter written from Canada, fugitive slave Joseph Taper asked for divine blessings upon
a. the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe.
b. his former master.
c. President Martin Van Buren.
d. abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
e. Queen Victoria.
61. In Joseph Taper’s letter to Joseph Long, how does Taper analyze his experience of living in Canada?
a. Living under a monarchy was difficult.
b. The treatment of slaves in Canada was abysmal.
c. Blacks did not receive educational opportunities.
d. The winter weather was bitterly cold.
e. The British system allowed for more “pursuit of happiness.”
62. How did slave holders use the Bible to justify slavery?
a. The responsibility of a slave to obey his or her master is implied by the commandment to “Obey your
mother and father.”
b. Slavery is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments, and expressly condemned in neither location.
c. According to a “lost book” of the New Testament, Jesus himself owned slaves.
d. Slave-owning tribes mentioned in the Bible, such as that of Abraham, were far more holy than those that did
not own slaves.
e. It was not man’s place to free someone that God had willed should be born into slavery.
63. What was the name of the vibrant community of former slaves freed by Virginian Richard Randolph?
a. Sea Island
b. Mount Vernon
c. Israel Hill
d. Sherman’s Land
e. Promised Land
64. Free blacks in the United States
a. had the same rights as whites in the North but faced far more restrictions in the South.
b. tended to live in rural areas if they lived in the Lower South.
c. sometimes became wealthy enough to own slaves.
d. made up nearly one-third of the African-American population in the South.
e. could testify in court and vote in most states but needed the local sheriff’s approval to carry firearms.
65. Which state had the fewest free blacks?
a. Mississippi
b. Louisiana
c. South Carolina
d. Virginia
e. Maryland
66. Which is true of free blacks who owned slaves?
a. In many cases, these “slaves” were family members they had purchased and could not legally free.
b. They had a reputation for being particularly brutal owners.
c. They were prohibited from selling their slaves at a profit.
d. They were prohibited from owning more than ten slaves.
e. In a few cases, the slaves they owned were impoverished whites.
67. Which is true of the role of slaves in the southern economy?
a. The renting of slaves became illegal in 1827.
b. Slaves were prohibited from supervising white laborers.
c. By 1860, a significant number worked in industrial settings.
d. The federal government refused to use slave labor for constructing forts in the South.
e. After several prominent cases of sabotage, Virginia banned slaves from working on bridges and roads.
68. A slave in which geographic area would be most likely to be working in cotton fields?
a. northern Virginia
b. western North Carolina
c. western Alabama
d. southern Florida
e. eastern Tennessee
69. Which statement is true about the labor that enslaved people did?
a. The large majority of enslaved men worked in the fields, while enslaved women mainly did domestic work.
b. The large majority of enslaved women and men worked in the fields.
c. On rice plantations, enslaved people labored in gangs.
d. Cotton and sugar plantation owners used the system of task labor.
e. Enslaved children did not work until they were age sixteen.